SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK PART 6 - now with added caffeine*

[ImBarryScott]

• I wish.

Morning all,

Hope you find this!

for your rough night Amber.

After a few good ones, we had a crap one too. Up at 1.30, 3, 4.30, 5.30, 6.15........
I think she was a bit overtired last night. Hope we can get her napping better today .

So how were all your nights?

Re: Weds, I can't make it as MIL is coming down for the day (wouldn't have been able to get to the Tate really, anyway).

Hi Macneil how old is your LO?

Mea, glad your nights are better. I have tried holding off from BF at night but more often than not DH has to call me in anyway as DS wakes up even more unless I get the boob in quick. So most times I don't fight it.

McNeil, how old is your LO? We have an early riser here and that is with broken nights too. (DD IS 12 months)She generally wakes between 5 and 5.30 for the day and there is NOTHING you can do to make her go back to sleep. I keep thinking I should just go to bed earlier myself and if i was sensible I would but I'm not and i don't. I think having DC2 is probably a good idea for the reason you say.

Tibsy, I can just about manage to read OK magazine. Not sure about a lit classic at the moment. I've bought so many books since being on maternity leave (I love buying books) and haven't manage to read many as spend too much time faffing on the internet!!

She's 9 months. She wakes a few times in the night as well - because we live in a tiny flat until we can move at the end of the year, she's still in with us, so maybe this is part of the problem, as dh seems to think, but I tend to think I'd just have to get up and go to another room if she was in another room. When she wakes, if I get up and put in her dummy she goes back to sleep and the dummy falls out again when she's asleep and all is fine, and that takes 10 seconds, so they're not proper wake-ups. But they do still WAKE ME UP, obviously. If I don't do that, instead of going back to sleep, she cries more and more unhappily until she's properly awake, so the dummy thing seems like the sane thing to do - but could also be conditioning her not to fall asleep on her own. That's what all my controlled crying expert friends say.

Controlled crying convert friends are a formidable bunch, aren't they? It has worked for them so how can you argue with them? But when you have a baby who sleeps okayish but as you say snaps awake at 5am, there's not really that much you can do about it. They won't play alone in their cot for two hours! They just get more upset. Mine just glares at me in a standing up position over her cot bars, until I stand up and go to her and then she chuckles and jumps about with glee, no matter how long she's waited. It is utterly charming, but ye gods it's ageing me.

Controlled crying isn't an option for me anyway when I live in this tiny flat because there are neighbours everywhere and I can't let her wake them at 5, or earlier. My cc friends say that in the long run they'll thank me.

McNeil, if you don't want to do CC then just say, it's not for me and move the subject on. I won't do it either and the others on here haven't or don't want to. It's not the only way. People frown about co-sleeping too but unless I want to get into a discussion I just say, well it works for us. That's it. Why do other people seems so keen to pass on their opinions about your parenting? It bugs me.

CC isn't a fail safe method either. Doesn't work for everyone and they suffer the same hicups with teething and illness so have to repeat the process frequently.

Sounds to me like your lo is doing pretty well if she's settling quickly with her dummy and you may find that when you move her into her room you all sleep better because you're not waking at every grunt.

hello, can i miserably join your thread? i'm so so so knackered. bloody 16 week old keeps waking at 1 or 2 ish and just won't go back to sleep till 4 or 4.30ish hence why i'm here now at 4.30am. i know all the strategies and have tried the bleeding lot of them. we do 'spaced soothing', controlled comforting, treat it like night no eye contact, stay in her room, dim lights yada yada yada. no difference. she's kept it up for weeks on end now and i can't go on like this. i know the only remedy is time probably but bloody hell its hard at the moment. makes me hate her.

until the morning smiles and then i forgive her instantly.

ugh.

morning - always kidded myself that i would need to join this thread (huge denial me thinks!) as I used to have the perfect sleeper, but now I have one of the aforementioned 5am wakers!

aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!! just needed to do that!

Morning all,

Flumpity - hello! those long wakings are such a killer. It's so hard when they are tiny.

Skirmish and Macneil - don't envy you in the early risers club .

Mae - nice to hear things do get better.

Meg - no bumpers here. I figured that DD would only get caught up in those, so we saved the cost and let her get caught in the cot bars instead . no clue how to stop those wayward limbs!

Tibs - how did the early night pan out?

Tam - no carbs after six? [impressed emoticon]

Re - meeting up. I think we'll have to give it a miss. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but unlike the rest of you I am totally not relaxed about naps at the moment. DD's getting very little daytime sleep, and this is worse when we're out. So I'm going to be stuck at home from 1-3 in a no doubt futile bid to get her to resettle and avoid an overtired bedtime. Rant over .

Ok night though. Up at 10.30, 1, and 4.45. We haven't had a long stretch for 3 nights though, since the naps went t*ts up.

morning welcome skirmish and flumpity. but sorry yourself here

at that age skirmish i would abandon all the books and what is supposed to be 'right' and let her co-sleep if it meant you got some sleep but you might not want to start that so feel free to ignore!

IBs glad you got a better night

ours good too.

bed at 7.30
woke at 2.30 (4oz milk)
woke at 7.30 for the day

Flumpity: it is hard in the early months, especially if you have long wakings . Can you get any sleep during the day? DS still a poor sleeper at 11 months and I spent the first few months trying every trick in teh book bar CC and nothing seemed to work - the only thing that helped me a little was relaxing and going with it for the time being. Not easy at 3am though. At that age it was definitely the early stages of teething for DS - his first came through at just before 6 months.

Macneil: no startling words of wisdom here! There is also a blog with some of our collective thoughts on if you want to have a look:

www.sleepisfortheweak.wordpress.com/

Not sure I can manage Weds either as am sniffling away so I might have caught DS's cold. Let me know anyway.

A slightly better night for us last night - gace DS some Medised which helped with his snottiness, he was fast asleep by just after 7, woke 9ish, we all went to bed at 9:30 cos we were knackered! About 3 wakings that I can remember but nothing too horrendous. Hope the cold is on its way out so we only have the teeth to contend with!

Tibs: I'm still reading a lot, but I tend to stick to stuff I've read before and whcih requires little concentration!

Tam: any reason for the health drive? No carbs after 6pm would be v v hard for me.

I'm still on the dairy- and egg-free diet for DS' eczema, and I'm a veggie, so if I cut out carbs too I'd be living on... er... water?

OK night for us, woke 3/4 times, then decided 5.45 was morning time but after half an hour of so of titting about in the cot, brought him into bed with us where he mercifully fell asleep for another hour.

Hi to the newbies...

hi everyone. busy night/morning.
flumpity - it's so hard and i feel like i've never got any words of wisdom to offer. but you're doing a great thing for your LO. I know it feels like hell most days and you don't know how you'll get through, but you do and you will. and slowly, slowly your LO will get more confident and hopefully the sleeping will improve a bit from there.
skirmish and macneil. 5am is such an uncivilised time to get up. i remember this. it used to frustrate me that ds would get up at 5, and be ready for a nap by 7 - now that just seems plain wrong! some people say putting them to bed earlier will make them sleep later, some say putting them to bed later will fix it. try it both ways if you wish, but if it doesn't work, all I can say is get the most sleep you can and try and find the good things about the early morning (eeeughghh, get me!) and then get yourself back to bed when LO does too for a morning siesta.
my theory about wakeup times is that they change over time due to age of LO, total amount of sleep they need, spacing of naps, wakings, and bedtime. So it's this complex matrix of factors. I feel like we've cycled through wakeup times. Thankfully we're on a 7am regime at the moment it seems. But everytime something seems to shift with nap timings or bedtimes, then the morning wakeup will shift too. all you can do is hang on for dear life, get some rest if you can and wait for it to change (again).
Well, ds has just seemingly regressed by about 5 months in the last 4 nights. he is waking up ALL night, every 1-2 hours. is soooo difficult to settle. tried to give him calpol at 3 in case it was teeth and he vomited it up. he came and slept in our bed from 4 to 7 and i had to cling to the side of the bed. why oh why does dh get half a bed and ds and i both get a quarter. sigh.

ps. we go this bumper-substitute thing, got someone to send it from aus. i didn't likethe idea of the traditional bumper, but wanted to stop limbs getting trapped.airwrap.com.au/

Amber: sorry you had a bad night . If it's any help, 6 months is classic growth spurt time - DS def got more unsettled at the 6/7 month mark (and at 8/9 months as well, sigh).

Could also be first teeth? Am I right in thkning they haven't come through yet?

Amber that looks great, do you know if any firms will ship it to the UK?

hi ep, thanks we're at 8.5 months now, but he's not waking up to feed or anything. it's like he can't stay asleep, could be teeth, is probably the best explanation. but is totally fine during the day or if we are with him at night.
i'm wondering if it's a separation thing, or a developmental thing. god, who knows. hope it sorts out soon.
oh have to rescue him from his bloody 30 min nap!

meg, i just looked at the babies galore site www.babiesgalore.com.au who stock the airwrap and they say For all Overseas Deliveries please contact the us on 02 9526 5311/ 02 9525 4188

so they will send it, just a question of whether the shipping cost is reasonable.

i really like it as a bumper alternative. maybe i should become a UK reseller!

phew LO just went back to sleep. at least we've avoided the 30 min nap horror. time to drink loads of tea.
i feel really guilty at the moment as i made dh get up this morning so i could sleep in. we both had a horrid night, both of us were up a lot and i don't think he slept that well with LO in bed with us this morning either. so what to do. but honestly we were both laying there with LO kicking and pulling our hair at 7am, and I thought since dh would have to get up for work soon i might as well get hte benefit oh, feel like a horrible person!

Amber: don't feel guilty! As you said, your DH was getting up anyway. Sorry about getting your DS's age wrong, not sure what has happened to the brain! Of course he;s been on solids for a good while now. It's all morphing into one atm, but 8ish months was a bad time for DS too - I also get the 'oh no it's like having a newborn again' feeling. All Things Will Pass

no probs, ep. i can never keep tabs on how old everyone's LOs are. they keep getting older by the day
i know it will pass. i know it will pass. it's just that we were doing so well, he even slept through last wednesday, and now here we are again. will it ever end?

anyway, he's still sleeping, poor little mite, must be as exhuasted as his mum.

Amber - since you're not utilising the 6 month growth spurt excuse that EP provided, d'ya mind if I claim it ?

Not sure how old your LO is Meg, but the BF withholding has only been in the last month or so (after DS turned one). I tried it at 9 months or so and blood-curdling screams were the result. DH would try and try to settle him and then I would give up and feed after all. Having read NCSS it made me feel better about relaxing and going with the flow. People talk about all sorts of techniques, but the only thing that has worked for me is waiting for him to get older. I don't think DS would have let me stop bf at night if he wasn't ready for it IYSWIM...

Got a lie-in this morning tho... 530 rather than 5am

amber feel your pain but i truly believe in your ds's case it's teeth and IT WILL PASS SOON. You don't co-sleep and he's used to being in his own room so I don't think he would regress with that. especially as he has slept through a number of times. He's doing so well for his age (until this teeth related blip)
stay positive. he could teach my ds a thing or 2 on the sleep front and he's a year younger!

mae you should be so proud bf ds until he's 1 well done